Intentionality: Or How to Buy a Loaf of Bread

Abstract

Parallels are drawn between the action-plans and basic-actions of intentionality
advanced by Boden (1973) and the quantized factors of Q methodology.
Concluding that intentions are complex is distinguished from making
complexity itself the object of inquiry, and what this implies is made
the basis of an experiment focused on the transitory thought in Boden's
essay. Of the three operant factors which result, two correspond to
Boden's own conclusions, but the third is suggestive of a greater
complexity, as found in the quantum theory of Prigogine (1980). A second
study reveals three feeling states relative to Boden's problem about
shopping for a loaf of bread, indicating that intentionality extends
from the simplest to the most complex of events. The conclusion is
reached that the assumption of unity, present since the Middle Ages,
must give way to complementarity and multiple intentionalities.